Devlog #3: Orders, ashes and thirteen languages (v0.1.4)

Version 0.1.4 is the biggest build we’ve shipped. It changes how a watch is scored, how it ends when you lose, how you read the hill and who can play it. It’s also the base the demo will launch on. Here’s all of it, in plain words.

The Commander’s orders

The same side missions every run are gone. Between waves, the Commander now sends you a dispatch with three orders, and you pick one, or none.

Each order asks for something concrete, and it costs you something. No one crosses the gate for three waves. Place no defenses for two. Cast no powers. Kill the champion before it uses its strike. Complete it and it pays out inside the watch: epic cards, max health, gold, Torchbearer uses or mana.
Orders come from your map. They depend on what your road put in front of you: whether the camp is waiting, whether Stillwater is in sight, whether the refugees are coming or the Thurifers have shown up.
The previous captain leaves you a note. If you lost your last watch, the first dispatch can carry an order written by the captain before you. That captain was you. What killed you is coming back.
Failing isn’t a punishment. A lost order is crossed out with the reason, and the next dispatch brings one fewer. That’s all.
The dispatch doesn’t pause the game. You can shrink it to look at the map before deciding; if you start the wave without choosing, it burns. In the demo it arrives twice, before waves 7 and 14.

A score that rewards playing well

The end screen has a new sheet, Watch score, that tells you where every single point came from.

The wave, the boss and your gold (which now counts for half), plus bonuses for playing well: base health at the end, perfect waves, no one crossing the gate, saving the camp and Josh, Stillwater still standing, the refugees who made it, the orders you completed, champions defeated, bodies burned, special plays, charges you cut short, the boss beaten before its third phase, flames that never went out, no Mist rifts and the Torchbearer’s relights.
What you missed stays on the sheet, in sepia with the reason. It’s your to-do list for the next watch. No line depends on how fast you played.
The online ranking starts from zero with the Demo Season: the formula changed, and old scores don’t mix with new ones.

The fall of Farpost

Losing used to be “they get through and it’s over”. Not anymore.

When the last life falls, time freezes with the horde at the gate, and a red Mist rises from the last stretch of road you cleared. The camera follows the road back to the base while the red snuffs out every torch it passes and the horde bursts apart as it’s swallowed. Only the Torchbearer is left at the gate, holding the only flame there is. He says his last words, the torch dies in his hand, and he’s gone too. A voice you don’t know yet laughs. Only then does the final report appear.

If a boss beat you, you watch it cross the gate in slow motion and reach the well at the heart of the base, where it bursts and all its blood runs into the well. The Torchbearer is waiting there with his torch.

You can skip it with Space, but we’d watch it at least once.

The campaign map is a world now

The campaign map is now a real 3D world, built from the same terrain as the game.

Farpost sits on the left with its single gate, and a road branches out toward every post on the hill. Everything starts under the Mist: each place you discover appears in silhouette and its road grows out of the fog, and once you’ve beaten it, it lights up with torches. What you haven’t found yet is a platform marked ??.
Every post has its scene: Josh’s camp with its fire and palisade, Stillwater with its houses and its well, the graveyard and its green flames, the Trapper’s cabin, the refugees’ cart. Sir Roderic chained between pillars, Sister Maelis in her chapel of fog, Lord Aurel on his throne with your own towers possessed around him.
The world is alive: crows crossing the Mist, fireflies over what you’ve won, cloud shadows, chimney smoke, the remains of battle on roads you’ve cleared.
It’s always deep dusk, and the only light comes from the torches. Drag to move, scroll to zoom.
One map for both acts, and the demo uses it too: everything past wave 20 is visible but locked, a glimpse of what’s coming.

The bestiary, and a story for every boss and champion

Enemies now have their own screen, the Bestiary (key B): filters by rank, a full card for each one with its animated 3D model, ability, health, armor and shield from the first wave to the last, speed, damage, gold and resistances.

Every champion and boss also has a History section: who they were before the Mist, what broke them and why they fight the way they do. The last line, what they say as they fall, is only written once you’ve beaten them.

Thirteen languages

The Long Watch is now in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The voices stay in English, with subtitles in your language.

The first time, the game starts in your system’s language. You can change it in Settings → Game → Language, where every language is written in its own script.
Japanese, Korean and Chinese have their own classic serif typefaces, in tune with the rest of the game.
Plurals read correctly everywhere (“1 delivery”, “3 deliveries”), and Turkish keeps its own capital letters.

Three new Commander powers

Bought at the Workshop, Commander post. Each one has its own level II.

Bloodletting: a rain of blades leaves every enemy in the area bleeding for 6 seconds, losing health and slowing down.
Chain Lightning: a bolt strikes the healthiest enemy and jumps up to six times to the nearest one, leaving the arcane mark.
Shackles: stuns for 1.5 seconds and slows for 4. Enemies that can’t be stunned (rams, chargers and some bosses) are grabbed for an instant and only slowed.

Burn the fallen

When a champion or a boss falls, its body stays on the road with a Burn sign. Click it and the Torchbearer walks over, lights it with his torch (he’s disgusted), the body burns in a green and red flame, and he’s surprised by what comes out: an epic card with the name of the fallen. Bosses give five to choose from. The body waits for you to decide. If you don’t burn it, there’s no loot.

98 achievements

From The Relief Arrived to the secret ones. Many come in three escalating tiers (defeat 10 champions, then 50, then 100), counted across all your watches. They live behind the new Achievements button on the main menu: a sheet you can filter by type, where the ones you’ve earned carry a fresh blood stain and the ones you’re missing show what they ask for and how far along you are. A notice appears under the wave emblem when you earn one, and the end screen lists the new ones from that watch.

Dead of Night, darker

Three new rules, only in Dead of Night: the Torchbearer gives one fewer free use per wave and charges more for a bribe, rerolls cost more, and every boss wave brings an extra Thurifer.

The Catapult’s Live Embers

The fire field from Live Embers used to land around the impact and often ended up on the grass. Now it always lights a block of road, the one closest to where the stone fell, and it looks like barrel fire. With several stones, each one lights a new block and neighbouring blocks merge into one continuous fire, up to four per area. Stepping on it leaves enemies burning. New card: Wide Embers (I and II) grows the field to two and three blocks.

Read the battlefield

Click an enemy and its card opens at the bottom right: the creature in 3D, its rank, type, speed, gold, its health, armor and shield with the numbers of each layer, what it does and everything happening to it right now (bleeding, burning, poisoned, stunned), with an icon for each. It works on bosses and barricades too.
Watch statistics (key G): what each defense and each Commander power did, damage per layer, kills this wave and in total, and a row of benefits per tower: how much damage its ammo added and which effects actually triggered.
Two new target priorities, Cluster and Summoners, and a Target switching option: Free, or Until dead (the tower doesn’t let go while the target lives).
Copy and paste a tower’s setup: Ctrl+C over a defense copies its priorities, ammo, mode and doctrine; Ctrl+V pastes it onto another.

Report a problem from inside the game

In the pause menu and on the main menu: if something broke, or you have an opinion or an idea, write it in your own words and it reaches the studio. The screen lists exactly what’s attached (wave, watch, version, FPS and resolution); you choose whether to add a screenshot. Never your name or your email. Offline, it waits and sends itself next time.

Enemies and balance

Tanks resist stuns (30 % shorter) and champions even more (40 %). A short stun still interrupts their strike or charge.
In the demo, clearing Stillwater takes 9 possessed instead of 12, but each one gets back up once. Fire, frost or a blow that bursts them keeps them down for good. They’re also immune to bleeding.
The Wrecker is human now (he always was: a big man of the Realm). Each new enemy debuts alone in its own wave.

That’s 0.1.4. It’s the base the demo will launch on, and we have news about that: read our next post. Add The Long Watch to your Steam wishlist and join us on Discord to be there on day one. See you at the palisade.